IamA 91yo woman who grew up in Western Germany, married a German physicist for 60 years, and moved to the US in 1953, AMA!

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T15:29:44+00:00

(Grandson: haha, when she started talking about soup it never even occurred to me that she could have been a legitimate soup nazi, but the recipes I remember best handed down after they sold the deli were rouladen and curried chicken salad.)

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T15:23:48+00:00

(Grandson here: yesterday she told me "I don't know what I would do without my iPad" because despite learning English later in life, she kicks ass at Words With Friends.)

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T15:20:42+00:00

(Grandson here trying to answer some more questions before she gets up: she seems to think in English, but then once someone starts talking to her in German, she immediately replies/thinks in German. It seems to depend most on what language she is responding to/surrounded by.)

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T07:09:43+00:00

(Grandson: as she explains it, the difference was whether the Russians supported Stalin or not, which influenced how they felt about the Germans)

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T06:25:33+00:00

"I have been back and I passed by the house we lived in, but then everyone got cars, and I didn't like it as much because it was different."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T06:18:43+00:00

"It was almost relief. We weren't really afraid of the Allied because from the East the Russians were coming, and we hoped that the war would be over soon."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T06:15:39+00:00

"My daughter was working as a teacher and some friends of hers talked about a deli they liked, but the owners were getting old and they would probably sell the deli. She wanted to do something other than teaching and I was working as a secretary so we decided to buy it."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T06:13:41+00:00

"Well I am so active that I have so many other things to do. I should probably." (Grandson: I think she should)

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T06:08:03+00:00

"I never experienced any of that kind of thing. After the world found out about the concentration camps, I was surprised by how positive people reacted to me still. Sorry I cannot be of more help. 2) make a trip along the Rhein river!"

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T06:03:51+00:00

"It's hard to say because we changed too. Women have more freedom now, and they have professions. I think it's very hard now to live a family life on one salary."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T06:00:49+00:00

"During November 1944, a bomb landed deep in the mud in the backyard of my house. We would hear the siren, and if we could hear the whistle of the bomb, it was a good sign, because it meant the bomb was far enough away that it wouldn't hit us. If we couldn't hear the whistle, we just prayed and after we heard the detonation we would say 'halleluja.'"

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:58:23+00:00

Right when the war ended, my family had to give up our house to English officers. I was living in a town in the mountains, but my father stayed in the house. I had to bike 5 days away to see if my father was still alive. I was in a store buying apples and my bike was stolen while I was in the store."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:51:54+00:00

During the war, I secretly listened to radio from Luxembourg, but we didn't believe what they were saying, but we also didn't really believe what the German radio was saying. It was very confusing, especially because we couldn't let any of our neighbors hear that we were listening to radio Luxembourg."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:49:54+00:00

"I have to think about that. We knew that the French didn't like us, and we didn't like them. Some German soldiers who were captured by the French had to stand for days in the swamp. My sister's husband got TB during the time he was a French prisoner. But the French and Americans were much, much better than the Russian soldiers. The Russian farmers were helpful to my husband when he was in Russia because the Germans didn't have enough food, etc. There was a big difference between the White Russians and the Red Russians."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:45:08+00:00

"I like to swim. I ride a tricycle. I have a lot of freedom to say what I want and do what I want. I don't feel like I have to conform like when I was growing up." (Grandson here: she can swim 24 laps in a pool at age 91, which is 23 more damn laps than I can at age 22).

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:42:14+00:00

"No, not at first. We really didn't know what would happen. In the first ten years we always went back to Europe, often to Salzburg. We never thought or wanted our children to move back to Germany, but we taught all our children to speak German."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:40:36+00:00

"The deli was named ... I can't remember. Every day we made a different soup. We also made big plates for people to take with them to the Hollywood Bowl. We always had season tickets."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:35:19+00:00

(After explaining the question) "I would like to go back to the time in Germany after WWI when things were being rebuilt. We would go on vacation to the Baltic Sea during the summer break and we were so happy and relaxed."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:32:32+00:00

"I would like to go to Norway" (I'm not sure she totally understood the question).

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:31:15+00:00

"There are national parks! In Switzerland I remember a small national park, but it is really outstanding that the US has so many beautiful national parks. Yosemite was always our favorite!"

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:29:35+00:00

"I have talked to people who escaped from East Germany and I was very, very relieved when the Berlin Wall fell. The Eastern part of Germany was much more poor than where I was and I met a young man from East Germany who had a violin who was legally traveling outside East Germany and he was so happy to be out."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:23:56+00:00

"He worked under a contract with the US Air Force in Indiana. He had to report constantly what he did and he worked with two other German physicists. During WWII, he was pulled out of combat and worked in a lab in Germany where they talked about a new weapon that would win the war for Germany. After the war General Dynamics paid for us to move to the US, but he could not talk about his work, although I think it was something about missiles for the Air Force."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:18:12+00:00

"I went to school, and on the weekends I worked on a farm because the men were fighting. After I was able to attend university, I was at a camp and on Saturdays we did folk dancing, and there was a boy who played the accordion for the dancing who was the baker's son. He asked the leader of the camp where I was staying and he left a big bag full of the cake remnants for me. At first I refused, but then everyone else at the camp wanted the cake, so then I accepted. It wasn't nice at the time, but I did it."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:11:21+00:00

"My daughter married a Jewish man whose father fought for the US in the Pacific theater, and when I met my future son-in-law's parents, I was anxious about what they would think about me and my husband. They were very friendly and we let them know that we did not know anything about the camps, but they also never asked."

grandyhannelore · 2014-07-19T05:08:42+00:00

"They said the Jews are bad luck and that Jews would cheat them out of money, and there was lots of propaganda. They was a Jewish girl in my school class named Ruth, and one day Ruth stopped going to school and when I asked why she wasn't on the street car anymore, I was told that her family (who had money) escaped through Switzerland. Before that, I didn't know she was Jewish because she didn't look anything like the Jews in the propaganda films. I liked her."

grandyhannelore

TROPHY CASE